Who Should Win?

Kiminality

Kaj

NewThunder

Flame

SilentFoxXy

Fink

Kratos Aurion

The Challenge find the best way to Advertise UO, and and show how it could work.

Areas must be Covered:

1. Increasing player base of all UO shards.

2. Creative , Fun , can even show off your large guilds.

3. Must be under $ 100,000 US dollars

4. No advertising any site on stratics , just mention costs and plans. ( this is based on any site or advertisers you may use ) Of course you can advertise UO on Stratics ( I would think)

5. Cartoons . TV , Radio , Web , Viral , ect...

5. All media types are ok.

Prizes:

1st prize :

1 month paid UO GameCode
2 Million gold any shard ( will need help from brokers)

2nd prize :

1 million gold ( will need help from brokers)

3rd prize

500k gold ( will need help from brokers)

I am the one offering prizes , EA/ UO /Stratics is in no way involved ( unless they want) , if any other guild / players want to donate to add to the totals PM me , this is my way of clearing my stuff out , as to I am all but quiting UO , unless something huge changes my mind ( Smacks Draconi , Wake up..... j/k) , ohh yea this is not a scam , its only for FUN and I will give prizes..Thank you and have fun..

Rules:

Must be legal ( no email spammage) and not go against any TOS / ROC based on UO/EA /Stratics . Agree this is for fun only , but maybe something good can come of it.Will take submissions until June 21 2008 , the start a poll for the best 5 with top 3 winning...

$100,000 dollars is nowhere near enough for anything but a token advertising effort.
Especially if you take into account the international nature of the game.

Internet advertising would be cheaper than physical advertising, though less effective, considering the lengths advertisers have gone to on the internet. Most people who don't block the most common forms of advertising completely, simply ignore them.

So...

Invest most of the money in doing something with the game. Something that would make it appealing to current MMO players.
Do that, and then make a big deal out of offering 21-day trials, or some such. Longer trials than the standard, and people will be more inclined to try it, because they're getting more time to play for free.
You make a big deal of it, and the various commentary sites around the internet will pick it up as news, and it'll propogate.

Internet advertising can be highly efficient, if you know what you are doing. Stuff like google ads is a waste of money for most companies though. You need to target the exact right audience and websites. I agree $100k isn't a lot, but you could definitely get some ads in the right places. With 100k you don't need to think like a big company, but like an underdog.
I used to work in advertising and done it all, run adds in magazines, newspapers, television, billboards and internet. And to put it in perspective: I've seen a $3000 ad run on a smaller website bring in over 1000 customers.

Stuff like TV and magazines only work if you have a very big budget and target a general gaming audience, which UO simply does not do.

Now that would be a waste of money, if you don't have much cash to burn.
MySpace has a very different usergroup than UO. MySpace is a social thing, so many people that do not game visit it. And because it's a very big site, advertising is expensive. You might reach a lot of people, but a 13 y/o chatting to her classmates isn't going to start playing UO.
Also from what I've experienced, is that a 1 day advertising run usually doesn't work as well as, say, 2 weeks. The first time people might not click it, but their brain does register the UO logo. It means the second time they see it they might check it since they have some sort of recognition.

I think an actual MySpace/FaceBook page would be cheap and effective. It works for a lot of artists and musicians. Such a thing would benefit from a dedicated site manager (I guess the $100k would be a year to two years' salary?), with content updates twice weekly.. whether it be KR wallpapers, announcements, commentary, user-supplied media such as links & resources, etc..

I think UO should be marketed as a supported "retro" game instead of trying to compete in the same genre as contemporary mmogs, which completely outclass it in terms of production values. UO's reportedly a very good earner; I wonder if it's strong enough to take a small reduction in subscription fees, say as low as $8/month, to encourage numbers.

I would spend the money of updating UO.COM, what a joke that homepage is. There should be a counter that states how many players are currently on, perhaps a second counter that shows how many scripters there are on, so that the gaming public knows that EA turns a blind eye to scripting; you could have it almost like a newspaper with headlines about what is happening in brit today.

1:- A simple , free idea based/akin to - the Dragons & Eggs we see adorned to every second post. Start with A Young UO character, unskilled. Every impression/click improves his/hers stats and abilities. Can be very very cheaply set up, and word of mouth advertised. This could even be developed into a total Click based mini game for forums/websites, along the lines of Trading cards, but with cliks, impressions etc as the required currency.

2:- Micro Cash transactions in game, for items, buffs, skills AND GOLD. Would stop the cheats, the dupers the framers, the scripters overnight.

3:- Higher start skill levels, and a handful of MAJOR skills, Warrior, Mage, Crafter etc, with the various side skills being learnt from that, and a lot quicker.
3b:- Henchmen/Bots with decent AI to enable the solitary player to take on the bigger dungeons. The current NPCs are just a waste of time, money, disc space, when you hire a Samurai with huge stats, he should fight like it, not die to one swipe.

4:- Bring back monthly , weekly, hell even daily in game events, adventures, with unique 'loot'. If a poker house can offer 24 daily 1 hr freerolls with a prize, surely EA can afford one creator of events daily weekly etc etc.

5:- A 24/7 in game , live support agent. friendly, helpful, and with the empowerment to make big decisions instantly, and ability to fix,recreate,check,supervise.....

6:- NO WAY to cash prizes, cheats would ruin, check out Kwari, failed limply.

7:- More housing plots available and accessible to young players.
7b:- Enable landscaping

8:- Account age, rewards based on time spent ONLINE AND INGAME.
A 1 hr a week 10 yr vet =520 hrs.
A 14 hr a day 7 day a weeker -98hrs a week, 5096 in game hours in 1 year, and still cant dye a leather skirt.

Stratics Veteran

PS : i'd so much like to get 2M gold can't believe it when i read here (often) on stratics that players "have too much gold" !!! that the game needs "gold sinks" rolleyes: and the like...
i'm so sick of killing monsters for GOLD (and then spend it right away on ONE item, or ONE pet)

btw i think this is a real issue for newbies : if you haven't enough gold, how can you really think about playing the game ?
how can you afford "good suits" or artys ?
how can you afford being killed ???

(of course i was meaning "real newbies" does this species still exist ? )

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